Posted on 01/13/2013 3:10:22 PM PST by Colonel Kangaroo
Nate Silver, the New York Times FiveThirtyEight blogger and statistician who rose to prominence accurately predicting sports and elections, has run the numbers and has come to a conclusion: The Seahawks, he predicts, will play in the Super Bowl.
There, theyll take on the New England Patriots, Silver thinks. And while the Seahawks may not be the second-best team in the NFL Silver says thats probably the Denver Broncos they may just be the best team in the NFC.
Theres always uncertainty with any metric, Silver told ESPNs First Take. I do think with a Seattle team that did come on so strongly in the second half, you worry, can other coaches readjust to them potentially? Talent-wise Im not sure its a team that has as much pure talent as certainly a New England or Denver might, and thats why the coaching could catch up to them eventually in the postseason, I think.
Silver said he looked mainly at figures from Football Outsiders, a leading statistical analysis site that takes not just overall season numbers, but picks apart every NFL play and weights them based on situational context.
For instance, based on a statistic called DVOA (defense-adjusted value over average), Football Outisders gives the Seahawks a 30.0 percent chance of making the Super Bowl ranking fourth among the remaining NFL playoff teams and a 15.6 percent chance of winning the Super Bowl. The Broncos had the best chance of winning at 24.3 percent, the Patriots were next with 23.6 percent and the 49ers were fourth at 15.2 percent.
But Football Outsiders thinks the Niners have a slightly better chance than Seattle to make the Super Bowl, ranking third at 31.5 percent. Of course, it all depends on the conference champion matchups after this weekends second-round playoff games, during which the Seahawks travel to Atlanta and the 49ers host the Green Bay Packers.
San Francisco obviously also played very well for much of the year, Silver told ESPN, but in terms of the balance overall between offensive and defensive play, Seattle had that best balance throughout the year and really, again, in the second half were blowing people out by 50-7 scores and so forth. So they had the best stats from the regular season. Again, you can worry about, will teams adjust to them, will Russell Wilson be a guy that wont surprise people as much in the playoffs now? But I think, if you have to pick one team in the NFC, Im still comfortable with the Seahawks.
Of course, the Seahawks beat the Patriots 24-23 in Week 6 of the regular season, when QB Wilson hit wide receiver Sidney Rice for the go-ahead touchdown late in the fourth quarter Oct. 14 at CenturyLink Field.
You can watch Silvers entire First Take segment at ESPN.com.
The fact of the matter, whether we like to admit it or not, is that polling has become very accurate in recent years, because there is so much of it being done, and the methodologies have become well refined. Anyone who has access to all the polling that he does is going to basically make the same predictions. It’s not nearly as big a deal as the liberal media wants us to believe.
"OK, Timeout!"
"Wait!? He missed that field goal! I didn't call Timeout?! I didn't!"
SO maybe it will be Obama Vs. Patriots.
A match we’re going to see anyway for the next four years.
I don't get the whole 'ice the kicker' routine. These are professional athletes. One is better off letting them kick with the play clock running down especially considering that they are expecting a timeout to be called.
“Well, if hes such a wizard, and his predictions are so golden, I guess you and the rest of us can just quit working and make an outstanding living just betting his predictions, right?”
No, markets only work when their are those who make predictions that turn out to be wrong. Those players who are best at analyzing data usually make the more accurate predictions and win most of the time.
Eventually, those who are inferior at analyzing data will wash out of the market and those who are best will thrive.
In the end, maybe 5-10% of the players will truly succeed and all other players will perish or hardly survive.
Even those who are best at analyzing data and making predictions are wrong once in a while.
If I were to bet on someone predicting which baseball prospects will be the best MLB players, who will win an election, or who will execute the best trading strategies or who will win the most money at poker, I will go with Nate Silver.
He just had inside information about the rigged voting machines.
Again with this poker rubbish. The guy has never even cashed in a significant tournament in his entire life.
Are you Silver's publicist or something? I see you just joined less than two months ago, which is more than a little suspicious to me, considering how long F.R. has been around.
Exactly my point. You are likely very savvy, and therefore do not bet on the basis of someone else’s predictions, recognizing that they are making calculated guesses - and that even the best calculated guesses have significant margins of error. There are a ton of people in the world who have much, much more statistical expertise than those like Nate Silver, or any of the other lay press personalities. Further, many of these people have access to computing power beyond what most, if not all of us have ever had access to, but they are not routinely wagering themselves to riches on the basis of their mathematical powers of prediction. There's a lot of variability in the world, and that's wonderful.
That said, I will make a prediction, in part based on the inherent variability, uniqueness, and need for individuality of each human being - that every human experiment based on the Marxist model, or variation thereof, will eventually fail, and that all who cavort as intellectually superior because they espouse such models will be proved wrong by history.
My son told me the coach was not complaining about the timeout. Rather, he was miffed that Bryant got a “practice” kick. Who knows?
It would take some serious gall to complain about a TO to the same ref you got one from.
But, too bad, too sad for the Seahawks.
Pete should go back to B.C.....Always thought he was the definition of the “Peter Principle”. That was a really dumb call by the same token the Atlanta coach having 12 guys on the field in the last minute of the game was equally as stupid.
Well, if hes such a wizard, and his predictions are so golden, I guess you and the rest of us can just quit working and make an outstanding living just betting his predictions, right?
There was money to be made on Intrade (not any more :-( )
Typical Silver. The guy is a hack.
More proof that Silver doesn’t know what he is doing and just got lucky.
He predicted a rigged election - BFD
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